Few people in the news business have valued secrecy quite like Roger Ailes, the former C.E.O. of Fox News. Ailes’s very own corner office on the second floor of 21st Century Fox’s glass and steel headquarters, in Midtown Manhattan, featured a solid wood door that prevented anyone on the outside from peering in. Visitors had to be buzzed in by Ailes or an assistant. They were also captured on-camera, their image projected to a monitor on Ailes’s desk.

Many assumed that such secrecy was a vestige of Ailes’s formative years advising Richard Nixon. Now, it appears that it may have run deeper. Last month, former anchor Gretchen Carlsonfiled suit against Ailes for sexual harassment—an event that ushered in a litany of former colleagues with similar stories. Weeks later, Ailes resigned. (Ailes has fervently denied all allegations. His lawyer, Susan Estrich, reiterated those denials. A spokesperson for 21st Century Fox also declined to comment for this piece.)

Ailes’s second-floor office now stands empty. Floors below it, in Fox News’s subterranean newsroom, a former Sam Goody retail outlet, staffers are still coming to terms with the rollicking events of the past month. During periods of crisis, reporters and producers tend to bury their heads in their stories, rallying around one another in their commitment to their work. But there is only one topic on people’s minds at Fox News these days: Ailes.

Sentiment in the newsroom is generally split between those who proclaim surprise (particularly regarding the sheer number of women who have alleged that Ailes harassed them) and those who feel professional relief—not all of them women. Ailes was gender-blind when it came to relentlessly pushing his talking points and admonishing those who did not follow along. Still, others said they remain fearful that even discussing Ailes at all could result in some form of punishment.

One staffer expressed to me an even greater fear: that, without Ailes, Fox News’s future is in an existential crisis. Under Ailes, the network had operated rather independently from its parent company, 21st Century Fox. Now, many staffers worry that they will be monitored more closely by “the Boys,” as James Murdoch, the C.E.O. of 21st Century Fox, and his brother, Lachlan, its executive chairman, are still known within the company. Indeed, many have feared for years that James Murdoch has little interest in his father’s core media assets—television, print, and movies—and remains more focused on a technological future. (A person close to James and Lachlan Murdoch dismissed both of these notions as “pure craziness” and said that the two view transforming the company as “a real calling.” This person also added that no one at the company need fear reprisals for discussing Ailes and insisted that the brothers want to foster an environment of “total trust and respect.” Meanwhile, in an August 3 conference call, Lachlan said that Fox News would not change its fundamental political character.)

A sale of Fox News, which generates some $1 billion in annual profit, seems unlikely. A massive culture change, however, seems probable. Some Ailes loyalists who remain affiliated with Fox News find themselves in a particularly difficult spot. They are anxious to distance themselves from him, even as they anticipate their own ouster from the network, a Fox source told me. Several of them, who worked for Ailes in a personal capacity but were on Fox’s payroll, were dismissed last week, according to one senior Fox employee.

But perhaps the biggest object of curiosity in the newsroom these days is the internal investigation currently being conducted by the law firm Paul, Weiss. The investigation originally focused exclusively on Ailes, but as allegations from at least 20 women have mounted—including Gabriel Sherman’s revelation that Fox paid Laurie Luhn, a former booker, $3.15 million in a settlement agreement—it has expanded to other Fox News executives. “A number of the women raised serious issues about individuals beyond Roger Ailes, who, while not as crass as Ailes, were nonetheless enablers,” said one individual briefed on the investigation. “There can be fairly raised a question: whether the atmosphere at Fox is welcoming to women absent wholesale changes in senior leadership.”

Throughout the underground newsroom, many believe that the Boys’ handling of the investigation will determine whether they are serious about changing the culture of Fox News or simply trying to make the whole mess go away.

Related Video: James Murdoch Reveals the Future of Fox at the 2015 New Establishment Summit

James Murdoch knows that corporate investigations can be unpredictable. After all, he presided over his father’s newspaper business during the News of the Worldphone-hacking scandal, when aggressive coverage, mostly by The Guardian, set off a series of events that included a lengthy police investigation, a judicial inquiry, and an F.B.I. probe. Murdoch and his father also, rather famously, had to appear before British Parliament. The results were disastrous. The scandal eventually cost News Corp a transformative deal to take over all of BSkyB, and cleaved Rupert Murdoch’s conglomerate into two separate companies, which resulted in a bloodletting of lower-level employees as the senior Murdoch struggled to protect himself, his son, and his favored top British newspaper executive, Rebekah Brooks. (Brooks, who temporarily left the company, with a nearly $20 million severance and a company-funded chauffeur, has since returned.)

If the hacking occurred in the shadows, many staffers say that Ailes’s alleged offenses were much more apparent. “So much of it happened in plain view,” as one person told me. “It’s hard to believe that executive management didn’t know what Roger Ailes was up to and how he conducted himself.” Already, multiple executives have been implicated in the scandal. “Some were more involved than others,” the individual told me. “Hacking was bad. This is arguably worse.”

According to Sherman’s reporting, Luhn’s $3 million settlement seemed to involve at least two other executives, Bill Shine, senior executive vice president of programming, and Dianne Brandi, Fox News’s executive vice president of legal and business affairs. (Through a Fox spokesperson, both Shine and Brandi declined to comment. The spokesperson noted, however, that Luhn’s settlement was “decided solely” by Ailes.) But two executives at the company also suggested that a $3 million employee settlement would hardly be “material” at such a large business—suggesting, in other words, that it might not be reported up to the parent company, and certainly not to Rupert Murdoch. “He wants to know the details of what they get done, but not how they do it,” one former executive told me.

“If they litigate the case, all the tapes will become public, directly
and through others. ... Nobody wants that.”

There is also a general perception among some who knew Ailes that, despite his vaunted secrecy, he himself might not have been all that discreet. “With a man like Ailes, it is beyond my ability to grasp that he wasn’t talking to other men about what he was doing,” the executive added. “To think other people wouldn’t know about it defies belief.”

For decades, Ailes’s secrecy defined Fox News. According to a person close to Ailes, the door in his office was erected around the same time that the deal for Sherman’s 2014 book, The Loudest Voice in the Room, was announced. (“If you had women all over the place like that, wouldn’t you be paranoid?,” one person who worked closely with Ailes asked me.) Now, many inside and outside the newsroom are hopeful that the leadership change will erase all that. “Roger ruled with a heavy dose of implied threats—to journalists, staff, and even colleagues who didn’t work for him—and psychological games,” former News Corp P.R. executive Andrew Butcher told me. “Roger deserves to end his career in disgrace,” Butcher continued. “It seems that Rupert’s tolerance of his excesses has finally been rejected as Lachlan and James modernize Fox and bring it in line with what is acceptable in a 21st-century workplace.”

Meanwhile, 21st Century Fox has begun discussing a settlement in the Gretchen Carlson lawsuit against Ailes, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. The company is requesting that Ailes, who has denied all Carlson’s allegations, fund at least a portion of the settlement, which is expected to reach eight figures, these people said. At issue in the settlement talks is the existence of audio tapes recorded by multiple women in conversation with Ailes, two people familiar with the tapes said. Ailes’s lawyers have argued that any negotiation with Carlson should take place in private arbitration, but the specter of a public trial looms. “If they litigate the case, all the tapes will become public, directly and through others,” this person said. “Then you will have a parade of women come in. Nobody wants that.” (Ailes, through his lawyer, denied all allegations.)

Many of the 21st Century Fox executives that I have spoken to hope the change will stick. Rupert Murdoch has historically liked to talk about how he and his staff were “pirates,” upending the status quo wherever they went. Yet that sentiment is now notably absent from the company memos circulated by Lachlan and James, who are, instead, pushing “trust” and “respect” as core company values.

Lachlan and James Murdoch have been primed since they were little to take over their father’s company. With this scandal, ironically, they have truly started to make a mark. Inside Fox, it is commonly accepted that Ailes would not have been jettisoned so quickly, or at all, if Rupert Murdoch were still C.E.O. One Fox News executive stated that there would have been no Paul, Weiss investigation under the senior Murdoch’s stewardship. Now, the Boys face the real test: Can they “modernize” their father’s company and still hold onto what made it successful?

Those searching for answers within the Fox News bunker shouldn’t put too much store in the findings of Paul, Weiss. Even in an expanded investigation, “the purpose is not a therapy session for the women involved,” the individual briefed on the matter told me. The law firm, after all, is providing legal advice to 21st Century Fox, not conducting a wholesale overhaul of Fox News’s culture. If James and Lachlan Murdoch truly want to change the way Fox News operates, they may have to be the pirates themselves.